WOL-Honors English IIA

In this course, students build on existing literature and composition skills and move on to higher levels of sophistication. Students work on independent projects that enhance their skills and challenge them to consider complex ideas and apply the knowledge they have learned. Literature: Students hone their skills of literary analysis by reading short stories, poetry, drama, novels, and works of both classic and modern nonfiction. Authors include W.B. Yeats, Sara Teasdale, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kate Chopin, Amy Tan, Richard Rodriguez, and William Shakespeare. Students have a choice of novels and longer works to study, including works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Elie Wiesel. Language Skills: In this course, students become more proficient writers and readers. In composition lessons, students analyze model essays from the perspectives of readers and writers, focusing on ideas and content, structure and organization, style, word choice, and tone. Students receive feedback during the writing process to help them work toward a polished final draft. In addition to writing formal essays, résumés, and business letters, students write and deliver a persuasive speech. Students expand their knowledge of grammar, usage, and mechanics through sentence analysis and structure, syntax, agreement, and conventions. Unit pretests identify skills to address more fully. Students strengthen their vocabularies through thematic units focused on word roots, suffixes and prefixes, context clues, and other important vocabulary-building strategies.